E-Newsletter from ZED Earth - May 2014
This is a communication update. We understand that it will surprise some of you pleasantly, while for others it may draw derision. The reason is that a ashy update from ZED will only invite cynicism because we have not had a good record of keeping construction schedules so far.
integrity and that there is commitment that we stand for. We have had this situation of non-performance in other communities too that we have created in the past. And we are doing all we can now to overcome this. I can t be more candid than this.
We plead guilty of not having had the best of communication channels and updates.
Woods Watch is a commitment from me personally, from the management, and our senior colleagues on Projects to give you regular updates, every month from now on. I have known many of you personally. There are those who I have dealt with in some context or other. I hope this is the beginning of a set of conversations between us that will lead to a deeper bonding and the creation of a community that is pioneering in its directions of urban sustainability.
I have personally had many of you call me and say that there has been a mismatch in the way the actual experience was. There was also a transactional de cit that compounded the challenge for you. We accept that there has been a trust de cit. We believe there is
IT’S BEEN A LONG HAUL We have taken nearly 3 years for completion of this project. It was committed to be completed by March last year, or even by December 2012 for some of you. The market conditions and our own challenges vis-à -vis project logistics led to a delay of some more months. We are now at the very end of this rally. By end of July we would have exited the campus. I am happy to inform you that we have 53 member-families who have signed on for becoming member of the ZED Woods community. As we now move into the maintenance of the campus, there will be challenges of building on the trust de cit. There will be scepticism, there will be people who will carry uncertainties and apprehensions and therefore infect each other in ways that such apprehensions can deepen. The completion of campus by July will mean that there will only be about 4 apartments that will have a few workers coming in past July. All infrastructure services are on. Fresh water treatment systems have been commissioned, power lines would be commissioned before May end. The waste water treatment plant is also to be plugged into.
The nish of external infrastructure work of ank walls in stone will be done in the next couple of weeks. Planting and vegetation on the podium or the atrium of ZED Woods has been completed. There will be more such vegetation that we will be doing. All plant species have been chosen to see that they bring higher carbon sink or absorption value. The more carbon we absorb the cleaner the air will be in the micro area of the campus. There is a vertiscape wall of green that will come up to the South side of the campus. There will also be vegetation and planting in the nooks and crannies of the ank wall that is now nearing completion. Lighting in the basement, parking signages, and the house keeping cleanup of the basement will also be done in the next couple of weeks as part of the wrap-up. There is a last coat of painting and few external nishes due in June. The West road has been completed. The East road will also be completed in the next couple of weeks. The planning on both streets - East road and West road - will be taken up in a way that we don t have bamboo. We may have other species that are more in harmony with the campus needs.
CO-EXISTING WITH THE LARGER CAMPUS ZED Collective as a living campus was completed in 2010. One-half of the campus is occupied with about 30-plus families living there. As early settlers, they have had a di cult time because the building had just started to take shape. Here is a section that dwells more into this
DISSENT OR DISCONTENT? In every community there will be people who di er, and di ers strongly. ZED Collective has not been an exception. Across every single apartment enclave anywhere, there are people who are discontented because the builders walk away after they have completed the project. In our case we have never walked away for many years after handover. That is because we have believed in such commitment for our members. There are those who align strongly with the green values and with the commitments that BCIL stands for. Then, there are those others who have had their reasons for nursing reservations on performance. The creation of any community means such group dynamics that we have to live with. We have had such experiences in the past, too, of communities taking their time to bridge their challenges with us. To be a builder is a curse, in a certain sense, because as a customer and a client you usually see the relationship only at its transactional levels with deep distrust of delivery. We have not made it easy, I must confess, for our customers in the past with the delivery mechanism not being the most e ective.
But I believe personally, and as a company, that this has been very rapidly set right. These short-term wounds of discontent will heal in your minds as the campus matures, and grows vibrant. It's happened to residents at all ZED enclaves in the past. It takes time. We have carried respect and admiration of discerning professionals architects, policy planners, urban strategists, and so on for many years. We have had a distinguished record in terms of the ful lment of these long-term visions even at costs that are greater than for most other builders. Remember, ZED Woods is among less than a half-dozen Platinum rated green buildings in India. And such certi cation is not easy. However, there is the perception of gaps in what needs to be delivered and what has been. We will both work together. We will listen to each other s challenges. We will bring these system-integrated innovations to a point where it inspires other communities while they bring you the joy of comfortable living.
COMMUNITIES TAKE TIME TO BUILD TRUST T-ZED Homes, for example, started with great di culties in 2006-7. But over the last seven years it has reached a point where it now earns the respect and admiration of many in the city in terms of proven performance on being water-positive and hugely energy-e cient. T-ZED Homes in White eld has been acclaimed globally as well as locally for the miracle of water being available with no tankers imported, no water supply board connection, no sewerage board connection, and no bore wells either. How we have managed to secure water for this campus of 95 families is in itself a story that is making global headlines as well as inspiring policy-makers and urban planners-thinkers to acknowledge clearly that BCIL is a thought leader in the industry. ZED Woods is no exception. Your enclave is a far more educated version of ZED Homes. The quantum of e ciency we bring on water, on energy is way beyond any of the norms that you will nd anywhere in Bangalore, indeed in the world.
Yelahanka has been notorious for its water de cit from 1967. Most apartments in the area have a serious challenge on water and dig deep with bore wells for exploiting ground water. At the campus so far in ZED Collective, we have used no more than about 20,000 litres for a community of about 35 occupied homes and 60 families. With ZED Woods now being occupied and coming alive, you will see that water e ciency is such that there will never be a de cit on water, there will never be a need for import of tankers of water. The energy planning at ZED Woods has been such that each house has systems that are far superior in terms of the quality of electrical design and work. The electrical appliances are also designed to be more than 5-star rated. The air-conditioners are one of the nest in the world with e ciencies that go way beyond most ACs available in the Indian market. These work on 5-amp switches and therefore bring down massively the energy load of the entire campus. The ZED ACs are a far superior version of the natural earth tunnel ventilation system that we installed in ZED Collective.
EARTH TUNNEL VENTILATION At ZED Collective, while the ZED Earth ventilation is appealing in its terms of sustainability, it has run the severe downside of the community not acting together to ensure that it is seen as a common asset and as a common property. This has meant that the individual does not relate with the common purpose. The use of any such common system means that we also pay the price for the collective scale and economics that emerge from such a system. However, this has not been accepted by the ZED Collective community. We don t blame them for this; it is just that technology has to be such that you can shape your personal destiny at home on energy, water, and waste infrastructure without having to pay the price of community initiative. This is not a commune; this is a community of people who have bought into homes with savings of a lifetime. We respect that. The delivery mechanisms therefore cannot be made by the company such that you have to pay a price for the sake of the larger community that ZED Woods is. At ZED Woods we had at least 4 or 5 of the owners asking for
why we did not do the earth tunnel ventilation. They in fact said that they bought into the apartment at ZED Woods because of the earth tunnel ventilation. It took us some explaining for them to understand that they will run into the same challenge that the other community at ZED Collective has got of not being able to accept the challenges of living with common costs. We have now changed that. Here at ZED Woods, with the highly energy-e cient air-conditioners we have ensured that you can shape your own destiny instead of having live with the common asset challenge that ZED Woods has got. To this day ZED Woods residents are not using the airconditioners because they have an apprehension that the cost will be much higher. It is not so, it is a question of how they will manage the operations. They have not understood this. We are trying to see how we can break some of the relationship challenges that the BCIL and ZED Woods associations has had. We hope to do that in the next one or two months. These are critical days of the summer in Bangalore. It is painful for us to see that they are not using the excellent airconditioning earth tunnel ventilation system because of their apprehensions. We hope to break this very soon.
ZEDWOODS SOLAR THERMAL IS A FIRST IN INDIA The ZED Woods solar system, has been devised such that you have an individual hot water system energized by the sun. There are 60 dedicated, individual solar panel stations for these 60 homes! That's unique and o ers you very long term, near-zero cost hot water. Every month's energy saving is nearly Rs. 400 at current tari s. The energy saving for the campus of 60 homes is as much as 50 thousand units every year. This translates to about 200 thousand units or 0.2 million units of power that the grid saves because of ZED Woods. This is the future. This is the only way we can avoid more power infrastructure that the government has to create if we don t reduce or rationalize our energy demand. That is part of the vision of ZED Woods. If one uses more water than designed at 200 litres, then you plug into a secondary back-up electrical system. The electrical system has been created e ciently in a way that the total demand is not under pressure at ZED Woods. If you have used up the hot water in storage of your solar tank, at ZED Woods, you can then supplement your hot water need with a geyser of your own. We would recommend you to buy an energy-e cient 5-star rated 0.5 KVA geyser. We will request you not to go for any geyser system which is over one KVA. That will bring down energy load. And it will also make you sustainable when you are living at ZED Woods. At ZED Collective we had gone for the regular solar water heating system, which meant that the solar tanks had to store water that has to be shared with more than one home. That
again led to negative community dynamics which taught us that we must help you shape your own personal destiny - with dedicated tanks for each ZED Woods home. ZED Woods therefore is an advanced version of what BCIL implemented at T-ZED Homes, and then at ZED Collective -- with the evolution and our learning of community needs ensuring we have individualized, personalized systems and yet within the frameworks of urban sustainability. Nothing like this exists in the world! It has required great care, lots of attention and rare expertise. We request you therefore to make use of this infrastructure. You have to understand that you make a big di erence in the way that you live in this community and implement these lifestyle approaches. It is hard for me to explain to you how you are truly pioneering by simply living at ZED Woods. There is no compromise on comfort or convenience for you as those who are living there already will testify as far as the living inside their home is concerned. Yes, they have had challenges because the external infrastructure has not been completed in 3-4 months that they have stayed there. That is being mitigated now by the end of June. We will be happy to help you understand how both the ZED airconditioning system at ZED Woods and ZED solar thermal systems at ZED Woods are superior in technology, in energy e ciency, and in user-friendly modes than in any of the other communities so far created by BCIL. And of course way beyond anything anywhere in the building industry.
ROOFS ARE COOLER ZED Woods o ers a rare heat re ector system. If you are an occupant of any of the top oors at ZED Woods, you will be happy to know that the heat re ector thermal installation system for the entire roof area ensures that heat ingress from the roof is far lower than in any other such regular building. Needless to add, that any home at ZED Woods is cooler by at least 4 degrees than any other regular apartment. This is unique only to ZED Homes, thanks to the thermally engineered wall material that we have used for nearly 10 years now. It might give
you personal satisfaction to know that these homes have been designed with great care and personal e orts of our experts to ensure that every material is picked on parameters of urban sustainability. Our material pro les have been worked carefully to ensure that e ciency ratings on embodied energy, construction energy, and then on operational energy is one of the highest in the country today. Indeed the world.
Harikrishna President ZED Communities
For private circulation only